It wasn’t the cape that made Jorge Arias feel like a superhero. It was saving a life.
“It made me feel wonderful to save a life,’’ said Arias in Spanish through a translator. “I would do it again.”
Arias works in the environmental department at Broadview at Purchase, a senior living community on the campus of Purchase College in Purchase. On Feb. 28 he was presented with a superhero cape and honored at the community birthday party for his role in saving the life of a resident who was choking.
Arias’ brush with heroism happened as he was cleaning at the front desk, he heard shouts for help coming from the nearby dining room. When Arias arrived, he found people huddling around a resident.
“I’d had some experience with this before and I recognized right away that he was choking,’’ said Arias, who proceeded to perform the Heimlich maneuver.
Arias, who lives in Sleepy Hollow but originally hails from the Dominican Republic, said he might not have made the save at all if it were not for a recent CPR course he took sponsored by the Health & Wellness Committee of the Community’s Residents’ Council. Arias said that because of the course, he knew all the steps to take to perform the life-saving maneuver.
Arias said he was very moved when Broadview presented him with the cape. But what really brought tears to his eyes was when the resident and his wife expressed their gratitude when they saw him the next day.
“It was an amazing feeling,’’ he said.
